Sunday, April 27, 2014

We got a few showers this week. April showers bring Mayflowers, and Mayflowers bring Pilgrims!

Any-hoo...

Republished on Slate is a strongly-worded article first published in The New Scientist: Mathematician Spies.

For the past 10 months, a major international scandal has engulfed some of the world's largest employers of mathematicians. These organizations stand accused of law-breaking on an industrial scale and are now the object of widespread outrage. How has the mathematics community responded? Largely by ignoring it.

I can only guess how much more horrified the ex-NSAers I know—you, my former colleagues, my friends, my professors, and my mentors—must be. Unlike me, you have spent much of your working lives helping the NSA build its power, only to see your years of work used in a way it was never supposed to be used. You could speak out now in a way that violates neither your secrecy agreement nor your honor. It's hard to believe that the professors I know at universities around the country would remain silent as the NSA abuses their trust and misuses their work.

On to lighter topics. Remember that story about how thousands of game cartridges were buried in the New Mexico desert?
Well, count that urban legend as "confirmed":

In 1983, faced with literally millions of unsold and returned E.T. games added to its already sizeable inventory of unusable cartridges, Atari opted for an environmentally unfriendly (some would say downright hostile) solution: The company dumped them into a city landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where they were crushed, buried, and later covered in a layer of cement. The incident was reported in the New York Times and prompted protests and legislation from city officials.

We’re excited to announce that the excavation of the long-rumored “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” video game burial site will occur on April 26, 2014 and will be open to the public. Spectators are invited to watch the team uncover the infamous Atari game cartridge grave.

The findings started out very promising, with an old, dusty Atari 2600 joystick buried in the landfill. Then an "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" cartridge. A box. An instruction manual. And the confirmation of "a lot more down there." How many more, we don't know just yet -- but at this point, we can safely report that those long-buried cartridges are actually, 100 percent there. Crazy, isn't it!?

I’m not doing this for the money, which means I’m doing it for my personal satisfaction. And what’s most satisfying to me is feeling like I got to put as much of my own creativity into it as possible without someone else calling the shots.

I didn’t have much time to play with it in the moment, but the very best thing happened - we were able to replicate it on any machine recently reimaged with our new workstation setup script! This meant I was able to get the bug onto my laptop! AW YEAH.

But first of all take a deep breath. We're herding some sacred cows to the slaughter right now. That's painful and bloody. TDD has been so successful that it's interwoven in a lot of programmer identities. TDD is not just what they do, it's who they are. We have some serious deprogramming ahead of us as a community to get out from under that, and it's going to take some time.

This raised the overall corporate measure of maturity of its teams in one year, because you will certainly get what you reward. Of course, this also meant that functions no longer encapsulated algorithms. It was no longer possible to reason about the execution context of a line of code in terms of the lines that precede and follow it in execution, since those lines of code are no longer adjacent to the one you are concerned about. That sequence transition now took place across a polymorphic function call — a hyper-galactic GOTO. But if all you’re concerned about is branch coverage, it doesn’t matter.

Adventure Time is a smash hit cartoon aimed primarily at kids age six to eleven. It’s also a deeply serious work of moral philosophy, a rip-roaring comic masterpiece, and a meditation on gender politics and love in the modern world. It is rich with moments of tenderness and confusion, and real terror and grief even; moments sometimes more resonant and elementally powerful than you experience in a good novel, though much of Adventure Time’s emotional force is visually evoked—conveyed through a language of seeing and feeling rather than words.

“With this project, the Library consolidates one of its many relationships with institutions in various regions of the world, in the light of its overall policy, its aims and its objectives”, explained Archbishop Brugues. “It does so through is manuscripts, which are a sign of the universality of culture: the manuscripts which will be digitally archived range from pre-Columbian America to the Chinese and Japanese Far East, encompassing all the cultures and languages that have inspired European culture. The humanistic mission that characterises the Library opens it to all that is human, including mankind's various 'cultural peripheries'; and with this humanistic spirit it seeks to conserve and make available the immense treasure of humanity that has been entrusted to it. For this reason, the Library will digitise it and make it available on the web”.

UPS engineers found that left-hand turns were a major drag on efficiency. Turning against traffic resulted in long waits in left-hand turn lanes that wasted time and fuel, and it also led to a disproportionate number of accidents. By mapping out routes that involved "a series of right-hand loops," UPS improved profits and safety while touting their catchy, environmentally friendly policy. As of 2012, the right turn rule combined with other improvements -- for the wow factor, UPS doesn't separate them out -- saved around 10 million gallons of gas and reduced emissions by the equivalent of taking 5,300 cars of the road for a year.

2. And is a conjunction; so is so. Except in dialogue between particular kinds of characters, you never need both conjunctions. “He needed to eat, and so he bought food” is incorrect. In 95% of cases like this, what you want to do is cut the and.

Here is a very long explainer. Sorry, this isn’t a shorter post or that I didn’t break it into 20 pieces. If you’re wondering why people are protesting you, how we got to this housing crisis, why rent control exists or why tech is even shifting to San Francisco in the first place, this is meant to provide some common points of understanding.

This is a complex problem, and I’m not going to distill it into young, rich tech douchebags-versus-helpless old ladies facing eviction. There are many other places where you can read that story.

This white paper outlines a set of practical and pragmatic security considerations for organisations
designing, developing and, testing Internet of Things (IoT) devices and solutions. The purpose of this
white paper is to provide practical advice for consideration as part of the product development
lifecycle.

While IoT products by their very nature encompass many forms of traditional embedded devices and
supporting systems, we felt that distilling our knowledge and experience in the specific context of IoT
would be useful. A lot of the concepts in this paper could easily be applied to many other related
areas of software and hardware product development.

Not so long ago, images of a young girl washed over the Internet. She was impossibly blonde and impossibly shaped, and surely it was all a masterly work of Photoshop. Right? Michael Idov travels to meet with Eastern Bloc Barbie herself and discovers that her world is far more bizarre and twisted than anything in the photos.

In case you haven't noticed, there's a shortage of high-quality and usable encryption software out there. Truecrypt is an enormous deviation from this trend. It's nice, it's pretty, it's remarkably usable. My non-technical lawyer friends have been known to use it from time to time, and that's the best 'usable security' complement you can give a piece of software.

But the better answer is: because Truecrypt is important! Lots of people use it to store very sensitive information. That includes corporate secrets and private personal information. Bruce Schneier is even using it to store information on his personal air-gapped super-laptop, after he reviews leaked NSA documents. We should be sweating bullets about the security of a piece of software like this.

Among coffee aficionados, the AeroPress is a revelation. A small, $30 plastic device that resembles a plunger makes what many consider to be the best cup of coffee in the world. Proponents of the device claim that drinks made with the AeroPress are more delicious than those made with thousand-dollar machines. Perhaps best of all, the AeroPress seems to magically clean itself during the extraction process.

There’s really nothing bad to say about the device other than the fact that it’s a funny-looking plastic thingy. Then again, its inventor, Stanford professor Alan Adler, is a world renowned inventor of funny-looking plastic thingies; while Adler’s Palo Alto based company Aerobie is best known today for its coffee makers, the firm rose to prominence in the 1980s for its world-record-setting flying discs.

This is the story of how Adler and Aerobie dispelled the notion of industry-specific limitations and found immense success in two disparate industries: toys and coffee.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

It appears that this is my tenth post about my trip to Korea; I suspect it will be my last.

Ten posts for a ten day trip: that seems about right, somehow.

Korea was certainly the most exotic location I've ever visited, but in many ways what's most apparent about Korea is how modern and efficient it is:

The trains all run on time; the signs and announcements are all in four languages (Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese).

The airport is spacious and well-organized; I've rarely had such an easy time traveling. I noticed that Incheon Airport has been voted Best Airport In The World for ten consecutive years; I'm not surprised.

The cars and trucks and buses are all modern and well-maintained; the streets are all in good repair.

Korea is an amazing place. Whether it is cars, computers, televisions, smartphones, refrigerators, railroad locomotives, ocean-going freighters, or almost anything else, Korean companies are world leaders, and possibly among the first brands you think of.

Korean children are all learning both Korean and English, and many are also learning Chinese as well. Korean universities are churning out graduates. Korea has become a world leader in fields as wide-spread as plastic surgery, pop music, and chip design.

Korean food is delightful. Korean culture is old and fascinating. Many Korean customs and traditions emphasize things like respect, consideration, and cooperation.

Korea certainly has challenges, most notably the reunification question, but also they must overcome a certain xenophobia and defensiveness.

Yet, having come so very far in just the last few decades, you'd have to say that the future of Korea is looking quite bright indeed.

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to visit and learn about Korea; if you ever get a similar opportunity, take it!

One of the most fascinating parts of my trip to Korea was visiting the various markets.

As I'm (slowly) coming to understand, in Seoul, a market is any place where two streets come together.

Or, as the old joke goes:

Q: When are two sailboats in a race?
A: When they can see each other

At any rate, it seemed as though almost any place we went in Seoul, we were at a market, or maybe it is better to say that the markets are everywhere:

On the streets

At the bus stops

In the subway stations

In parks, plazas, parking garages, museums, office buildings

Often, it was hard to tell where the markets began and ended. Our hotel was in a highrise tower, and occupied all the floors beginning with the fifth floor. Below us was a shopping mall ("Times Square"), and you could take the hotel elevator down to the basement and be in the mall. In fact, you could start at one end of the mall (where E-Mart was), walk through the main atrium and mall area, continue through the basement of the hotel, walk through an enormous underground shopping area, continue walking through stores until you found yourself on the subway tracks. And there were even shops right on the subway platform.

The markets in Korea never close. In fact, we heard that the peak time for shopping at some of the more popular malls was at about 1:30 AM on Saturday morning, when people got off work on Friday evening, changed out of their work gear, and headed off to the mall to "shop til you drop." I found myself up and about one Sunday morning at 6:30 AM, and I walked next door from the hotel to see a large produce market with dozens of open-air stands. Even though the temperature was hovering near freezing, the vendors were tending shop, cleaning and preparing produce for display, evaluating the day's goods.

Space is at a premium everywhere in Seoul, and so the markets are packed in every which way. Market stalls tend to look like this:

or this:

Of all the markets we went to, some of them were particularly interesting.

It stretches out for many blocks and is a covered but open air warren of stalls of every sort of vendor. It's interesting to see how the stalls are arranged: a fruit vendor will be next door to a hat seller which is next to a shop with dried herbs, followed by a butcher shop, and then a store selling smartphone cases and headsets. You can find anything in Yeungdeungpo Market, from used power sanders to new rice cookers to bow ties and shoelaces to traditional medicine.

I had read my guidebook and had some idea of what to expect but it was still overwhelming and a few parts just as shocking as the book had warned.

Another absolutely fascinating market (in fact, one of the highlights of my trip) was Noryangjin Fish Market on the banks of the Han River.

Those who know tell me that Tokyo 's fish market is the best on earth, but this was certainly the best fish market I've ever seen.

From the outside it's just a giant concrete warehouse, but when you are inside it is staggering.

You have to understand that each of those overhead lights in the picture above is hanging over an individual seafood store that each look something like this:

There are many types of fish of course (many of which were unfamiliar to me), but also:

shellfish

urchins

rays

shrimp

octopus

cuttlefish

cucumbers

snails

shark

and so much, much more.

And everything could not be more fresh. At one point I watched a man negotiating for the best pufferfish.

When you make your selection you can go upstairs to the restaurant level to have your purchase prepared and served immediately (or take it home if you prefer, in handy clear plastic baggies perfect for carrying on the subway :) ).

First we visited a strange old electronics market in Cheongyecheon, full of vendors of every sort of electronics gear and componentry, then walked along the restored riverbank to Dongdaemun Gate.

An interesting market in this area is Doota, which occupies the first 10 floors of the Doosan Tower.

Doota is particularly unusual because of how it is arranged. Where most market places in Seoul seem to be arbitrarily arranged, with a vendor selling socks in between one selling plumbing fixtures and another selling toner cartridges, Doota is carefully arranged to give the feeling that it is a single department store, with each floor following the overall pattern:

Third floor: handbags, luggage, and shoes

Fourth floor: men's wear

Fifth floor: jewelry and cosmetics

etc. If you didn't pay close attention, you might think you were in Macy's, or Bloomingdale's, but in fact each individual stall on each floor was a separate and independently operated store, without any walls or doors to divide them.

There are more than a thousand separate stores in Doota alone; the handy guidebook and pamphlet that you pick up at the front entrances outlines it all, and also contains several pages at the back with printed translations of useful shopping phrases:

Do you have any other colors?

Can you please wrap this for me?

Do you have a smaller size?

Each phrase is displayed in English, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, perfect for pointing at while you try to make yourself understood to the shopkeeper (including response phrases for the shopkeeper to point at in return with their answer).

One market which we didn't make it to, unfortunately, is the world-famous Gyeongdong Traditional Asian Medicine Market. I was hoping to visit, but we just didn't have time. I'm sure I would have been fascinated, but perhaps it's just as well that I didn't make it here, as this is said to be the most exotic of all the markets in Seoul and it might have been just a bit too much for my companions and I, no matter how prepared I was.

If you ever get a chance to go to Seoul, make sure you set aside some time to visit the markets.

Friday, April 18, 2014

On one of our "off" days, we happened to be going from someplace to somewhere else, and we found ourselves walking along a concrete walkway. As I recall, it was a pedestrian overpass which led from the Noryangjin Fish Market to the Noryangjin Subway Station, and passed over some railroad tracks in between.

As I said, it was just a walkway, sort of like the one you find between the Coliseum BART Station and the Oakland/Alameda County "O.com" Stadium.

Except that, as we rounded a corner in this particular walkway, there was a man sitting quietly in the corner, sitting on a milk carton, with an umbrella to protect him from the sun.

My friend Stephen paused, and got my attention, and said, "I know what this man does! For a fee, he will hand-carve you an inkpad-stamp, with any sort of custom design on it, for you to have as a souvenir."

Well, I was intrigued, and after a bit of this and that, I picked out a handsome blank wooden stamp, and my friend Guenjun quickly drew some Hangul characters on a piece of paper for the man to carve.

He placed the blank stamp into a simple wooden jig on his table, lined up the paper, selected one of his carving tools, and went to work.

In barely a minute or two he had carefully carved the stamp.

Here's what it produces:

브 라 이 언

Now, you probably don't know any Hangul (and I'm only just beginning to learn it), so I'll Romanize that for you:

Beu ra i eon

Since it was somewhat elaborated for effect, you might take a second to realize that it actually spells:

Bryan

Now, beyond the simple beauty of the design and the skill to hand-carve it, you ought to think about a few other things:

In his head, the craftsman has to invert the figure/ground relationship, so that he actually carves away the spaces between the letters, leaving the letters themselves as the raised surface to take the ink.

Moreover, since he was looking directly at the face of the stamp, but Guenjun wrote the letters directly on the paper, the craftsman has to perform a mirror image translation, so that when the stamp is impressed, the letters come out as they were intended to be, left-to-right.

I sat as he carved, and watched in fascination.

So, print your name, then think about what you'd have to carve away from a blank piece of wood so that you got the mirror-image inverted representation of those letters on an inkpad stamp.

Myself, I've got the stamp at my desk now.

And, whenever anybody comes by to "shoot some ideas by me," or "get my reaction to something they're thinking about," I can (pause for effect), then give them the honest-to-goodness

An enormous plaza in front of the museum has several world famous sculptures which were quite interesting. Best known is "The Brothers", while a newer sculpture is the Tower of Korean War, erected for the 60th anniversary of the war.

Inside, the museum is vast. It has four full floors in two main wings, with many exhibit rooms. I could easily have spent 8 hours in the museum, but as I had barely 45 minutes to spare, I raced through trying to see as much as I could.

Although the main focus of the museum is the 1950 war, the museum actually covers all the wars through the ages and the exhibits about the older wars are as fascinating as the modern ones. For example, an entire pavilion is dedicated to the great Admiral Yi Sun-sin.

The museum was full of school groups, even at 10 AM on a Saturday morning, all big eyes and excitement to see all the sights.

The most dramatic room in the museum is the Memorial Hall, which is deeply moving. It is truly one of the most beautiful memorials I have ever seen and worth the trip by itself.

Out back are acres and acres of planes, tanks, jeeps, boats, howitzers, etc., all covered with hundreds and hundreds of children investigating every last nook and cranny.

If you can't make it to the museum, well, you could always take the virtual tour.

Although I didn't spend anywhere near enough time at the museum, I'm still glad I went, and would gladly visit again, if I ever get the chance.

I think that, of all the places I visited in Seoul, Mt. Namsan was among my favorites.

Mt. Namsan has a perfect location: it is almost in the middle of Seoul, smack dab between Itaewon and downtown.

From the top of Mt. Namsan, you can (on a clear day) see everything that there is to see. Unfortunately, ours was not a clear day, but still.

We took the train to Myeongdong and then took the cable car up Mt Namsan.

The views from the top were great and we admired the "love locks," a local tradition. I've seen these elsewhere, but apparently they are a particular favorite at Mt. Namsan.

The top of the mountain is a park all its own, with space for concerts, cultural exhibitions, and a cafe, as well as the observation tower and its famous restaurant.

We didn't go up N Seoul Tower as the visibility was not so good (which means I unfortunately can't tell you anything about whether the restrooms are as astonishing as they are alleged to be).

Instead we took the gorgeous hiking path back down the mountain and stopped at Namsangol Hanok village. Here the government has made a sort of park by moving several authentic Korean buildings here and restoring them and arranging the setting.

We took a break to eat lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Chungmuro. I must say it will be very hard to eat Asian food in California now that I have been to Seoul.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

During my visit to Seoul we happened to spend a fair amount of time in Suwon.

Each morning, we leave the hotel at 7:30 for a short walk to Yeongdeungpo train station, where we catch the 8:00 am express train south. By 8:30 we are in Suwon.

Suwon is a suburb of Seoul, if you can say that a city of 1.2 million people counts as a suburb of another.

One of the big highlights of my trip to Seoul occurred in Suwon: our hosts took us to a very traditional Korean restaurant for dinner. All total there were 15 of us ; we sat on cushions on the floor at a long low table as course after course was brought to the table. I lost count somewhere around course 20. Much of the food was food I had eaten before, like Bulgogi and Galbi while some was extremely exotic such as Nakji Bokkeum and Hongeohoe.

One afternoon, we decided to take the opportunity to see a bit more of Suwon.

We took a cab to Hwaseong Fortress, a UNESCO world heritage site. This part of the walled city dates back to the late 1700' s and has been well preserved. You could spend hours walking along the city walls, visiting the guardhouses and gates and vieewing the beautiful buildings.

We were getting hungry though, so we walked into central Suwon, a bustling area full of market shops and busy streets. My colleague called his friend, who suggested a popular local family restaurant just two blocks away. We had to ask a couple of passersby for directions as it was down a side street but soon we were there.

This dinner was a very local experience. Sitting at a plain table, we soon each had a stein of local Korean lager and the plates of chicken started arriving. Indeed, this dinner was as advertised : chicken and beer.

The plates of deep fried chicken were straight from the fryer in the front window and were hot and tasty and easy to wash down with the beer. There was every sort of piece, for nothing goes to waste except the bones to be tossed in a small bucket in the middle of the table (and I'm sure those weren't wasted either)

Full and tired, we headed back to Seoul and the hotel. Just before we got there, we took a detour to walk down a side street, which we knew already was "the special street," the sort of street you could see in Amsterdam or Bangkok if you desired (or so I am told) . Even knowing what it would be ahead of time, it was still rather a shock to these sheltered eyes, all the more so for the fact that it was just 100 yards from the hotel and mall entrances, if you knew where to go.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

We went to a number of different parts of Seoul, but a few neighborhoods stand out.

Insa-Dong is probably the most approachable part of Seoul. It is a peaceful neighborhood full of interesting buildings, restaurants, shops, art galleries, tea houses, souvenir stores, food vendors, interesting public artworks, and more.

It is a place where tourists come to browse, where families bring their children, where couples come on dates, and where grandparents come to be together. When we tired of browsing, we sat happily in a tea house, enjoying light snacks and herbal tea, watching across the street as child after child emerged from a speciality soft-serve ice cream vendor, clutching their treat in hand, beaming from ear to ear.

In many ways, walking around Insa-Dong reminds me of strolling around the inner harbor in Victoria, British Columbia: it's a completely civilized and yet immersive way for a newcomer to get a feel for the city in just a few hours.

The well-known Gangnam neighborhood is an entirely different experience.

Gangnam is sort of like Sunset Boulevard meets Times Square meets Michigan Avenue, full of restaurants and nightclubs and and office buildings and stores.

Every building is covered in advertising. Seventy foot tall outdoor video screens play k-pop music videos and ads with the latest Korean celebrities.

The area has also become the plastic surgery capital of Asia. Gleaming skyscrapers full of cosmetic surgeons fill the needs of Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and more. We learn that plastic surgery nowadays is less about repairing damage and increasingly more about image alteration just for effect and distinctiveness. Be the only one in your circle with a permanently raised left eyebrow.!

Our first evening in Gangnam was a business entertainment experience, as we were visiting our business partner there. They first took us to a very nice Korean restaurant, where we sat and enjoyed a wonderful barbecue. Unlike several of the other Korean barbecue restaurants we visited, the barbecue grills in the center of each table of this restaurant were heated by actual charcoal! A wiry waiter used a long metal handle to carefully bring white-hot dishes of charcoal out to the table and maneuver them into the grill areas, then later returned to (equally carefully) extract the still molten charcoal and return it back to the kitchen area once we were done.

After dinner, our hosts walked us nearby to a local noraebang, or Korean Karaoke room, where we belted out hits old and new, danced like crazy fools, and generally had a great time.

Karaoke in Korea is nothing like it is in America. It's much more popular, for one thing, and for another it has evolved a set of customs and etiquette that are all part of the fun.

I was particularly good with the tambourine, by the way!

Yet a third sort of Seoul neighborhood can be found in Dongdaemun. Where Insa-Dong is full of art, antiques, and tradition, and Gangnam is all about entertainment, celebrities, and nightlife, Dongdaemun is about shopping.

People come to Dongaemun to get things done: go shopping, run errands, grab some street food, and then move one.

It's fun to visit the touristy areas and the glamourous nightspots, but it's also fascinating to see how the city runs, and the part of the city that keeps it running is Dongdaemun.

So when we got there, we found a nice cafe next to the Dongdaemun Gate, got ourselves a drink, and sat for an hour while we watched all the various people go about their business.

There are many neighborhoods in a city, and many many neighborhoods in Seoul; I was pleased that I got to visit neighborhoods of different sorts.

Monday, April 14, 2014

One of the highlights of my visit to Seoul was seeing Bukchon and Namsangol.

On my first full day in Seoul, we went to Bukchon Hanok Village. This is a neighborhood in the Gwanghwamun area between the Gyeongbokgung Palace and the Changdeokgung Palace. Specifically, we visited the cluster of Hanoks that lies along Bukchon-ro 11-gil, which is reached by walking up Bukchon-ro from the Anguk subway station.

A Hanok is a traditional Korean wooden house.

The Hanoks in Bukchon are still actively occupied by residents, so what's really happening here is that you find yourself walking down quiet residential streets, admiring the beautiful houses on either side.

There is at least one museum and at least one cultural center in Bukchon. We briefly poked our heads inside the museum, which was nice, but we were in a hurry, sadly.

There are also a few Hanoks in Bukchon which are now guest houses, cafes, wine bars, and the like. They seemed tasteful enough to me, but I guess this increasing commercialism is controversial.

Bukchon is near some very nice areas, including Insa-Dong and Gwanghwamun Square, and generally is a really delightful place for an afternoon stroll. If you get up near the heights, the views are very good, too.

Later in my visit, near the end of it in fact, we stopped by another Hanok village, Namsangol.

Namsangol is different than Bukchon, as it is a collection of existing Hanoks from elsewhere in Seoul that were all moved to this one location, and were carefully restored within a park-like setting that is intended to be historically representative.

That is, Namsangol is a museum, not a place where people are actually living.

But, that being said, Namsangol is gorgeous! The park is very nicely landscaped, with a peaceful (man-made) creek running through it, and the buildings are all arranged elegantly, with nice sight lines to set them off and emphasize their architectural qualities.

There are lots of informative placques which explain what you are seeing, and for the most part you can wander all about and really get a good look at the buildings.

If time is short, and you can only pick one of the two villages, you can't really go wrong. Bukchon is more authentic, but Namsangol is prettier and more educational.

Instead of worrying about which village to pick, I'd suggest visiting whichever one you happen to be near:

If you happen to be visiting one of the palaces of Gyeongbokgung or Changdeokgung, then combine that with a visit to Bukchon, which is right next to either palace.

If you happen to be visiting Mt Namsan, or N Seoul Tower, or the Myeong-dong or Chungmuro areas, then combine that with a visit to Namsangol, which is close nearby.

Here, a street festival was under way, and we paused to talk briefly with a group of young women very concerned about the comfort women memorial issue, then shared a bowl of (I think) Mul Naengmyun from one of the vendors at the festival.

From here, we walked across the street through Gwanghwamun Gate past the perfectly stoic guards in their brilliantly colored outfits into Gyeongbokgung Palace.

The guidebooks compare this to Beijing's forbidden city. I've never been there but this was certainly a bucket list site to visit. This is the third incarnation of the palace. It was first built in 1395, then destroyed 200 years later, then rebuilt in 1867, then destroyed again in the 1900's. Civic groups have been working hard to restore the palace since the devastation of the early 1900's and it really shows.

In addition to just admiring the beautiful buildings, there is much interesting history here, as well as great illustrations of details, such as the clever system used for central heating of the buildings by building charcoal fires in alcoves in the stone foundations and blowing the heated air under the main building floors.

My favorite section was the throne hall and its great adjoining courtyard (Geunjeongjeon), with the intriguing "rank stones" (pumgyeseoks), indicating how the officials are to assemble by rank during important ceremonies.

As with all the places we visited in Seoul, we had far too little time for this beautiful palace and its grounds. You could easily spend an entire day here, walking through the gardens, visiting the museums, admiring the buildings and learning about their history.

Even though we sort of raced through it, I really enjoyed visiting Gyeonbokgung Palace and would strongly recommend it to anyone visiting Seoul.

Forget about Saturday; you're wiped out. Spend Sunday trying to get back on your feet.

Then there's 5 days of work.

Then on the next Saturday, you can check out and make your way to the airport and head home. It's only (!) a 10 hour flight back to California, because the winds will blow you home.

And you get to buy back the time that you spent a week ago, so this time you leave Seoul on Saturday evening and arrive back home in California on Saturday morning.

But forget about Saturday; you're wiped out. Spend Sunday trying to get back on your feet.

So you end up spending 5 days traveling to and from Seoul, which means you should only do this if you're able to spend at least a week there (though one of my colleagues traveled to Seoul and only spent 2.5 days at the office; you are a better man than I am :) ).

Anyway, I'm home and unpacked, and will try to post a few pictures and thoughts as time permits.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

It takes a huge bounce; Suarez bears down; Stoke defender Marc Wilson rises like a startled pheasant and tries to head it back to his goalkeeper, Jack Butland. The header is too weak; the ball drifts; Suarez scuttles past Wilson, his eyes raised and goal-drool already shining on his chin. Stoke leg-breaker Ryan Shawcross lurches across, droning with imminent damage, but his attempt to sweep the ball away from the Suarez of the present turns out to be a neat pass to the Suarez who lives two seconds into the future—who jinks, gathers, fends off a half-hearted embrace from Shawcross, and with his first touch slides the ball under Butland’s out-flung left leg. The back of the net receives it with a sigh. Butland tastes grass and ashes, Shawcross looks blackly at Wilson, Wilson’s face is a potato of disbelief. And Suarez arcs away, rejoicing.

A "potato of disbelief"? I don't know.

But I do like "droning with imminent damage," and "the Suarez who lives two seconds into the future." Nearly perfect.